“Truly I have,” Baptiste replied promptly. “As great a villain as ever went unhanged.”
“Would you like to help get him hanged?”
Keneu sprang to his feet. It was evident he had understood something of what Hugh had said. “I go,” he cried fiercely in bad French. “Where is the Iroquois wolf?”
“There is an island down the shore,” Hugh went on, “the Island of Torture, Ohrante calls it, where he and his band take their prisoners and torture them to death. Sometime soon he is to hold a sort of council there.”
“How know you that?” Baptiste interrupted.
“I shall have to tell you the whole story.” Hugh turned to his half-brother. “Blaise, shall we tell them all? Baptiste I can trust, I know.”
“As you think best, my brother.”
Sitting on a log by the fire at the edge of the woods, while the moonlight flooded the bay beyond, Hugh related his strange tale to the amazed and excited Canadian and the intent, fierce-eyed Keneu, the “War Eagle.” The other Indian also watched and listened, but it was evident from his face that he understood little or nothing of what was said. Hugh made few concealments. Frankly he told the story of the search for the hidden furs, the encounters with Ohrante and his band, the capture and escape, and what Blaise had learned from overhearing the conversations between Monga and the Indian with the red head band. Hugh did not mention, however, the packet he carried under his shirt, nor did he say definitely where he and Blaise had left the bateau and the furs. Those details were not essential to the story, and might as well be omitted.
“We know now it was through Ohrante father was killed,” the boy concluded, “and we, Blaise and I, intend that the Iroquois shall pay the penalty for his crime. He has other evil deeds to pay for as well, and that isn’t all. As long as he is at liberty, he is a menace to white man and peaceable Indian alike. He calls himself Chief of Minong, and he has an ambition to be a sort of savage king. He is swollen with vanity and belief in his own greatness, and he seems to be a natural leader of men, with a sort of uncanny influence over those he draws about him. One moment you think him ridiculous, but the next you are not sure he is not a great man. If he succeeds in gathering a really strong band he can do serious harm.”
Keneu gave a grunt of assent, and Baptiste nodded emphatically. “He must be taken,” the latter said.